GOP Rep. once complained that men couldn’t call women ‘sluts.’ He lost his seat to a woman.

Share this:

U.S. Congressman Jason Lewis gave his concession speech at the Republican Party of Minnesota headquarters at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Bloomington, Minn., Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018. (Jerry Holt/Star Tribune via AP)

Republican Rep. Jason Lewis of Minnesota made headlines this summer when it was revealed that he made bigoted remarks about women on a radio show before he took office.

On a syndicated show he hosted in 2012, Lewis spoke up in defense of Rush Limbaugh, who had been criticized for calling a Georgetown University student “a slut” for petitioning the school to pay for her birth control. Lewis wondered why it was no longer acceptable to use the word to refer to women.

On Tuesday, Lewis was among a large group of Republican men who were defeated by Democratic women challengers. When it convenes next year, the new Congress will have more than 100 women in its ranks for the first time in history. Democrat Angie Craig won her bid to unseat Lewis in the suburban district south of Minneapolis by about 5 percentage points.

Lewis, who voted with President Donald Trump’s positions about 91 percent of the time, had run on his votes for the tax cuts and the effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Craig, a former health-care executive, is being included on the lists of Democrats who represent various demographic firsts in Congress. According to NPR, she is the first lesbian mother and, for Minnesota, the first openly gay woman to be elected to Congress.

Lewis’ remarks were unearthed by CNN in July.

“Well, the thing is, can we call anybody a slut? This is what begs the question,” he said on the show. “But it used to be that women were held to a little bit of a higher standard. We required modesty from women. Now, are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can’t call her a slut?”

The comments are part of a long trail of statements he’s made that have drawn scrutiny. In the run-up to the 2016 election, the Atlantic called him “Minnesota’s Mini-Trump” and noted his history of incendiary remarks on issues of race and gender.

Trey Glenn, who oversaw eight states in the Southeast as the EPA's Region 4 leader, faces charges of using his office for personal gain and soliciting or receiving a "thing of value" from a principal or lobbyist, according to the Alabama Ethics Commission.

Not since the 1940s has California had single-digit Republican representation in Congress.Now there are eight.After Democrats succeeded in ousting Republicans from every congressional seat in the GOP stronghold Orange County, who from California is left representing the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan on Capitol Hill?Republicans held 14 of California’s 53 seats in the House of Representatives before the...